Breakdown: AJ Sousa at the BJJ Library Challenge. “Beating the bigger man with the Lasso Guard”

How you can use the Lasso guard to beat the bigger man

In 2015 BJJ world champions Saulo and Xande Ribeiro released 5 episodes of a YouTube-only JiuJitsu Reality TV show under the banner of their online instructional website, BJJ Library, called The BJJ Library Challenge. BJJLibrary.com is actually one of the best resources for online BJJ instruction you’ll find on the net – on the one had you’ve got lots of video lessons from Xande and Saulo, who both specialise in a “strong on the basics” approach to BJJ, and you’ve also got plenty of video instructional from the leading lights in the BJJ universe, like Leandro Lo, Clark Gracie, Eduardo Telles and JT Torres, all showing the techniques they have become famous for.

The BJJ Library Challenge was a really well made show – following a similar format to The Ultimate Fighter, six black belts lived together in a house in San Diego and had to undertake various training challenges set by Saulo Ribeiro, then compete against each other in JiuJitsu matches, the winner getting the chance to fight Xande. Saulo used a modified rule set that kept things simple – a submission finishes the match and just one point was awarded for every sweep, guard pass, submission attempt or takedown, with penalties for stalling. The object was to keep the JiuJitsu flowing and make the matches exciting. It worked too.

You can watch all the episodes of the show below:

SPOILERS!

I’m going to assume you’ve watched all the episodes now, so if you haven’t there are some major spoilers here, so don’t read any further!